Privatisation at the National Gallery: a reflection, and a modest proposal

The National Gallery has outsourced its security; the guards' strike was an abject failure, as AHN explains. The Union had a weak hand, and played it badly. The National Gallery always held all the cards, but they mismanaged the situation spectacularly. They unfairly dismissed an employee, but not just any employee. They sacked a union rep during one of the most contentious negotiations, which was a fantastically stupid move that caused the situation to escalate. 

The NG brought the strike on itself. Outsourcing is still a bad idea, but its implementation was handled incompetently. There is a serious lack of basic managerial competence and basic savvy. It is not simply that a senior individual made the decision to sack the union rep, but also that the management structure allowed the decision to be taken—it's a collective failure. And then it was compounded by upholding the decision on appeal. Morons. And where was the expertise from the Trustees, who are meant to provide outside guidance? The board seems stuffed with dilettantes who relish the social cachet but don't bring much to the table. I'm always appalled when the board minutes record their delight with the progress of restoration, which few of them are even qualified to judge. 

I'm not ideologically opposed to privatisation. My objections to outsourcing one of the key functions of the gallery are practical. But I do understand the need to save money and operate more efficiently, so in the interests of constructive engagement let me suggest a better candidate for outsourcing: conservation. The NG's conservation department has, in its history, done incalculable damage. Most of the collection has been drastically over-cleaned, given the collection a different appearance from museums in Europe that have been more cautious. 

The conservation department is expensive, powerful and dangerous. It holds great institutional power at the NG (the Head of Conservation was interim director before Nicholas Penny). It should be subservient to the curators. And it is dangerous, because its institutional authority means that it is immodest and subject to groupthink, promoting its bad ideas elsewhere—like the appalling overcleaning of the Leonardo's Virgin & Child with St Anne in the Louvre, promoted by NG conservator Larry Keith.

An internal conservation department has a natural incentive to create work for itself; who is going to say that nothing currently needs to be done, so they should take a holiday? On the other hand, it may on occasion have too much work to do, such as preparing pictures for a big exhibition, which incentivises haste. Given the lumpiness of the work schedule, it is a natural candidate for outsourcing. The day-to-day work of inspecting pictures annually ought more properly to fall to the curatorial department, which ought to have the skills to inspect pictures physically for damage and identify conservation work required. Outside consultants can be brought in to assist as required. 

The internal cost of cleaning a small picture is £34,500, which is far above commercial rates. And the NG is less competent than many independent conservators. They are now having to crowdsource to raise the funds to keep the conservation department going. Enough! Close it down. Save the money, and hire contractors. If they don't have the money, restoration will have to wait - which is not necessarily a bad thing, given the disastrous consequences of their historic haste. 

Strikes at the National Gallery

Picture: BBC

The National Gallery's guards are striking against plans to outsource their jobs. People are understandably annoyed at disrupted visits, and my first instinct is to back the NG on this one. The guards' case has not been well made. The boorish fool trolling Bendor Grosvenor's blog does their side no favours, and Polly Toynbee's support almost guarantees that I'll take the other side (an unworthy prejudice, but I find it an effective heuristic). Hackneyed arguments against evil outsourcing are often a plea for special treatment rather than a principled case for a public service ethos. Sometimes outsourcing is just a cheaper and more efficient way of delivering a service, and I'm all for that. 

 

But this time I'm with the union. Their fight for the best terms for their members coincides with the public interest, and they're doing a better job of safeguarding the gallery than the trustees and managers. The NG is pursuing outsourcing for the wrong reasons and it won't work. 

 

First some background. Outsourcing requires an explicit contract defining the services to be delivered and how delivery will be monitored and assessed. Contractors need to bid on a level playing field, so they need precise definition. Contracts are then won primarily on price - the cheapest tender generally wins. So the contractors are acting predictably and rationally when they seek to provide the barest minimum service consistent with the service level agreement. That's not a problem when services can be defined precisely. If the job is patrolling a goods yard, outsourcing might make sense. You want people on the ground as a deterrent, with an easily defined and easily assessed role. The contractor needs to hire a rota of staff, give them a defined patrol route, then monitor with GPS and CCTV. Contractors' cost cutting benefits consumers and taxpayers, but only if they continue to provide an appropriate level of service - which has to be definable in a service level agreement.

 

The National Gallery's guards don't just patrol the galleries. Theirs is a more complex and more important job, which in my experience they do very well. They have to balance an enforcement function with a public service function. They must be courteous, professional and helpful, and also sometimes assertive in protecting pictures from visitors who may be quite inadvertently putting them at risk. How do you write that down in a contract? Guards are always in the public eye, and I've seen laziness and incompetence from time to time. But I'm mostly struck by their professionalism and efficiency and helpfulness, enlivened by occasional quirkiness, humour and passion. Assessing guards' performance involves a degree of subjective judgment, as does hiring the right people in the first place. That kind of assessment can't be contracted out.

 

I suspect outsourced guards will be less knowledgeable, less helpful and more boring, which is a great shame. But the thing that worries me most is that they will resolve the balancing act between protecting pictures and keeping visitors happy by ignoring protection entirely and ducking any potential conflict. They will have no incentive to intervene if people poke at the pictures (happens more often than you'd think), because there's unlikely to be immediately visible damage, and if there is it's unlikely to be traced back to a guard failing in their duty. But every time somebody complains that a guard has told them to step back, it will reflect badly on the contractor. The guards' incentive will be to sit back and smile and the visitors. 

 

As former trustee Jon Snow tweeted, protecting the art is the gallery's key duty. It's not a cost-effective way of securing a service. It's a devious way of evading responsibility. If something goes wrong, they can blame the contractor. The NG's own story is that they need a more flexible workforce to cope with private evening events. I wonder if part of the issue is that they need more supine guards for private hire. The great irony is that they're criticising the union for causing closures, but museums that host private evening events are notorious for closing early and arbitrarily to set up for paid functions; it happens all the time at the V&A, especially. Paying guests take priority. And for all the pious criticism of the effect of strikes on visitors, I've more often been inconvenienced by rooms that are closed because they haven't had enough staff - which is a management and budget problem. The Poussin and Claude rooms seem to be closed half the times I go, and sometimes entire enfilades of the Sainsbury Wing are out of bounds.  

It's all a sad reflection on the new corporate National Gallery. Once the contract is signed they will lose control of the must fundamental function of any gallery. They're putting the collection at risk and harming the visitor experience. And they are evading their own direct and primary responsibility to protect their pictures. Good luck the strikers, I say.